


Hear Them Shout Across the Land

by brandnewsoul



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Boy Band, Alternate Universe - Popstar, Gen, Multi, Surprise Peter Parker
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-07
Updated: 2014-11-07
Packaged: 2018-02-24 02:05:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,672
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2564249
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/brandnewsoul/pseuds/brandnewsoul
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Steve Rogers goes from being a member of the biggest boy band in the world to the Avenger with the most successful post-pop career. But just when he thinks he's out, the group that brought him there pulls him back in.</p><p>(Thanks, Tony.)</p><p>Or: The Rise and Fall (and Rise Again) of The Avengers, With a Little Help From the Black Widow.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hear Them Shout Across the Land

The moment that Steve steps onto the red carpet, the first question anyone asks him is about the Star.

 _Congratulations,_ says the reporter from _Extra_ with hair the color of caramel and an unnaturally white smile. _I know that Tony and Clint are here, and they've already mentioned where they were when they heard about the Walk of Fame. Where were you?_

As he tells the abbreviated version of the story, the crowd behind him and the reporter shrieks in delight. "And here comes one of your bandmates!" the reporter says. "Tony! Over here!"

Flashes go off and Tony punches him in the arm. "Steve-o! Look at you."

"Hey" is all that Steve could get out before the _Extra_ reporter trains her mic onto Tony, asking him for further comment about the Walk of Fame. She makes a comment about his "bold fashion choice," and the camera angles down towards his fluorescent Air Force Ones, prompting Tony to shrug and say something about mixing street fashion with Tom Ford and couture.

Steve barely listens to the rest of the exchange, only to have Tony tug at his sleeve and say, "C'mon, Rogers, the public awaits." He turns and waves at the crowd, and Steve follows his lead. There's a roar in his ears, and it almost feels like the old days again.

At the end of the greeting line, Clint's waiting with Natasha, who lights up at the sight of them. She waves, and light reflects off of her phone screen. "Perfect timing," Clint says. "I was just getting ready to talk her out of taking a selfie. Help me out."

"Oh, come _on,_ " Natasha says, taking Steve by the hand, "Can't a girl get a picture with her favorite guys?"

Tony gasps, and clasps a hand over his heart. "I'm a favorite now?"

Natasha's grin fades and for a fraction of a moment, she looks like she's planning on pulling Tony into a chokehold. The idea of it would seem ludicrous to anyone who didn't know her as well as Steve did, but it was entirely possible.

"Don't push your luck," she says as she motions for Steve to get into the shot.

"Aw, do I have to?" Clint says.

"Quit whining and get over here, Barton."

The four of them squeeze in tight for the picture. Steve's right in the middle, with Natasha on his left and Tony hamming it up on the right. Clint leans over the rest of them. "Let me see that," he says as he reaches for Natasha's phone. After a minute of awkward angling and grumbling about Apple versus Android (resulting in all of them telling Tony to shut up), everyone finally gets into position.

"On three, say 'cheese,'" Clint says. "One, two—"

The phone's flash goes off.

\-----

 **@natasharomanoff:** Me + three dorks. pic.twitter.com/gt77ox2395

 **@TeamBlackWidows:** RT: "@natasharomanoff: Me + three dorks. pic.twitter.com/gt77ox2395" SWEET.

 **@idkmybffcate:** @natasharomanoff tell them i want a new avengers album plz

 **@AvengersTourPetition:** @natasharomanoff YOOOOOO

 **@Saucypants:** @natasharomanoff IM CRYING

 **@ihearttonystark:** @natasharomanoff y'all look great! can't wait to see the guys get their star!

 **@Coffeeaholic212:** MY HEART RT @natasharomanoff: Me + three dorks. pic.twitter.com/gt77ox2395 #avengersreunion #plz

 **@idkmybffcate:** @Coffeeaholic212 #avengersreunion we should make that trend

 **@Coffeeaholic212:** @idkmybffcate YES LET'S #avengersreunion

 **@idkmybffcate:** #avengersreunion make it happen! RT if you want it.

 **@AvengersTourPetition:** #avengersreunion YASSS @idkmybffcate is doing the Lord's work!

\-----

Steve had been on tour when the news dropped. In Chicago, to be exact, about a half hour before show time. Phil came in, rattling off a list of things that needed to be done over the next week: the radio interview followed by a visit to a children's hospital in Cleveland, a photo shoot at a bakery in Louisville , and a stint judging a Biggest Steve Rogers Fan contest for a radio station in Memphis. "And oh, congratulations on the Star," Phil added at the last minute.

"What star?" Steve asked as Maggie from wardrobe motioned for him to tip his head down so that she could fix his tie.

"A star on the Walk of Fame," Phil said. "It was just announced." He pulled his Blackberry out and manically pressed some buttons before finding what he was looking for. "Right here: Pop group The Avengers to receive Walk of Fame star.' Updated fifteen minutes—"

" _I'm_ not getting a star," Steve said. " _We're_ getting a star."

"Well, you were a member of the group, so by proxy you _are_ getting a star—"

"But you were—ugh, that's kind of tight—you were implying that it was a solo star."

Phil shrugged. "At any rate, you're going to get a star. The ceremony's set for spring, they're looking to see who will give your induction speech, and if you're game, then it's a matter of getting the others on board…" The sound techs scrambled in and began to circle Phil and Steve like buzzards armed with microphones and headpieces.

"What, they don't already know about this?" Steve asked as the tech guy came toward him with a headset.

"They'll find out soon enough," Phil said. "But I figured that since you're the leader of the group, you'd want to know first."

Steve sighed as the tech handed him a microphone. "I'm not the..."

"For all intents and purposes, you are," Phil said. "Look, we'll finish talking about this after the show's over, okay?"

The talk the next day spilled over into the following week. Clint was the first one to reply to the prospect of the star ceremony, and was more than okay with taking a three-day weekend from _The X Factor_. They'd gotten the heads up from Pepper that both Tony and Bruce were game, and Thor delivered a hearty "Of course!" via Skype.

"It'll be good to see you all again," he said from a plush hotel suite in Stockholm.

"Definitely," Steve said with a smile.

"You sound uncertain."

"Well." Steve shifted back against the desk chair in his room in Memphis. There were six hours 'til he was set to be on stage, and this was one of the few moments in the day that he had to relax. "Time marches on, but it's…"

"Bound to be somewhat awkward?"

"Yeah."

"What's past is past," Thor said in a soft voice. "The others have agreed to do this, right? Surely if they're up for it, it means that any ill will has been pushed aside for the sake of togetherness."

The doubt that had been lurking in the back of Steve's mind slightly gave away at this. If Thor could be optimistic about this one-time reunion, why couldn't he?

"We'll see," he sighs.

\-----

The next morning, the red carpet photo has been retweeted over ten thousand times, and gotten a mention on TMZ. **#avengersreunion** is one of the top trends on Twitter, along with **Widowmakers Love Avengers**. "Got to love that overlapping fan base," Bucky says. "Widowmakers and… Hey, Steve, how come you guys don't have a catchy fan group name?"

Before Steve can reply, Sam says, "Seriously, though, you all should get on that. You know what they call me, Sharon, and the rest of the band? Team America."

Steve buries his face in his hands and groans. "Really?"

"No matter what you do, to at least _half_ the world you'll always be Steve from The Avengers, ergo, you are Captain America," Sam says with a grin.

"Talk about fan nicknames that never die," Bucky adds.

"No thanks to _Teen Beat_ ," Steve grumbles.

There were definite perks to having grown up and out of the _Tiger Beat_ demographic, most notably that inside jokes and one-off comments no longer become gospel truths to fans. After mentioning in an interview to some now-defunct teenybopper mag that before getting in the band he'd thought of enlisting, a clever staff writer had bestowed Steve with the nickname of Captain America.

The others took to the moniker with an almost sadistic level of glee. During a shoot for _Rolling Stone_ , Tony convinced one of the wardrobe assistants to find a white wig and insisted that Steve needed to wear it with an American flag draped over his shoulders. Clint went down a more unconventional route and gifted Steve with a leather tricorn for his birthday. "As long as I get to be first mate or whoever's in charge of keeping watch in the bird's nest," he said.

( _That_ lead to Thor deciding that Clint's nickname was Hawkeye, and all of the fallout from that distracting them from chanting, "O Captain, my captain" at Steve. It also led to Clint chucking a duck call at Tony's head.)

Bucky shrugs. "They could've done worse. Could've interviewed me and I would've given 'em _plenty_ of dirt on you. You getting your ass handed to you on the playground way too many times, all the times we tried to moonwalk in the kitchen…"

"Tried and failed miserably," Steve says, grinning at the memory.

"Hey, I failed miserably, and you failed _spectacularly_."

"Bruised tailbone."

Sam shakes his head. "Listening to the two of you talk, I'm honestly amazed that either of you survived childhood. Or that Steve actually got some moves."

"I got better," Steve says defensively.

"Those tapes of you from way back are still hilarious, though."

"Wait, you've seen those?"

Sam laughs. "Dude, Phil has an _archive_ of footage on you all. It's creepy, but hilarious. If I ever need to feel better about my life, I just watch that video of you learning the routine for—"

A wadded-up napkin hits him square in the forehead, and Bucky lets out a maniacal cackle.

"That was totally uncalled for!" Sam shouts.

\-----

The earliest days in the group weren't as rosy as the official biographies portrayed them. The official bios were puff pieces intended to cast a shiny, optimistic glow over the first few years of taking five guys who had originally intended to be solo acts and making them function as a cohesive group.

Steve had been doing talent shows for a few years when Nick Fury approached him with the group offer. That in itself was an anomaly, as Clint and Thor had been recruited by Phil, and one day Bruce had shown up out of nowhere. They later learned that he had been brought into the fold by Melinda May from A&R. Besides Steve, Tony was the only other one who had been directly scouted by SHEILD Records' CEO.

Their first meeting was tense. Bruce was a grade-A wallflower at first; his head was down in a black spiral bound book for the first half hour that Steve knew him. Clint and Tony had both been accustomed to working solo, while Thor was more used to working with a team, because he and his friends back in Norway ("Sweden!" he'd corrected far too many times to keep track of) had been in a band together until American talent scouts plucked him from the bunch, insisting that he would be bigger without The Warriors Three.

(Not that it made any difference. The Warriors Three were signed to Valhalla Records a few years after The Avengers became Huge. In '99 they won Best Rock Video at the VMAs and at the after party, Steve got to meet them for the first time. His memories from that night are hazy, but he does remember Sif complimenting his voice and saying that she'd be glad to accompany him if he ever decided to "ditch the pop tart sound.")

Clint was the one to finally break the awkward silence. "You know what, this is kind of _Breakfast Club_ -like."

"How's that?" Steve asked.

"We've got the princess manifested in the former child star…" Clint gave Tony a particularly pointed glance. "We've got the athlete with Thor, the weirdo with the guy who is writing a damn symphony in that book of his—"

"Wait, what?" Tony said.

"It's not a _symphony,_ " Bruce said, loud enough to drown out Clint's quasi rant.

"—and then I'm the only one who's left over, and that means I'm Bender, I guess?" Clint slumped in his chair and looked over at Steve. "So, guess you're going to be stuck writing our hit song."

"I can't write music—" Steve said, just as Tony interjected, "Shit, Banner, what _is_ this?" and Thor leaned over Bruce's shoulder to peer at his handiwork and add, "May I have a copy of this? I believe I could play that, and perhaps we could—"

"Do you _MIND_?"

It was the loudest that any of them had heard Bruce speak up to that point.

"Hey, no hard feelings, man." Tony was standing with his head craned to the side like a confused owl, trying to read whatever was on Bruce's pages. "Just curious. That looks kind of cool, mind if I take a second glance?"

"It's a mess," Bruce said brusquely. "I still have to work on the chorus some, and the bridge needs some work—"

"Think I could work on an arrangement?" Tony had a wild look in his eyes, like someone was holding out the keys to a newer, shinier version of the sports car that _People_ said that he'd dropped a truly obscene amount of money on. "Not right now, but if…"

"Why not now?" Thor asked. Steve had met him first, and strictly on first impressions, he'd expected for Thor (his real name was Don Blake, but his family's nickname for him had become what _everyone_ called him) to be a dick. He was taller than Steve—taller than all of them, really—and looked like a junior body builder. Once he started talking, he proved to be funny and scary smart when it came to music.

"I've got a keyboard in my room," Thor said, clamping one of his huge hands on Tony's shoulder. "We could compose something together!"

The next two days, Steve spent most of his time listening to Bruce, Tony, and Thor all talk lyrics and music, while he and Clint compared and contrasted CD collections. They practiced songs together and started to bond, all while the final details of their contract with SHIELD Records were ironed out. At the end of the month, they were flown out to California to participate in what was essentially Boy Band Boot Camp: voice and dance lessons, basic publicity coaching, and a final meeting with the head of the label, Nick Fury.

"The Avengers?" Steve said after skimming over the contracts that lay before them. "That's our name?"

Phil looked sheepish. "None of the other ideas worked best. It just came to me."

Next to Steve, Tony tapped his pen against the thick stack of paper on the table. He was a constant source of nervous energy, always moving or jostling something because he could. "It's workable," he said.

"I like it," Clint added with a shrug.

"And besides, it's already on the paperwork," Bruce said. "Wouldn't we have to wait for another week or something for them to rework it if we changed the name?"

The thought of having to wait more to really get to work was what made Steve pick up his pen and sign his name with a flourish. "That makes it official, right? We're The Avengers now?"

"Yes," Phil said while the other four signed their documents. "Yes, you are. Welcome to SHIELD."

\-----

The day of the ceremony is poised to be the perfect April day in Los Angeles: clear and sunny, pleasantly breezy, high about seventy-five. Steve's been in the area since about eleven the night before, and after waking up for the third time in less than six hours, he finally gets up for good around five AM, dresses, and heads out to see the spot on the walk where the star is.

He checks his phone for the location and wanders down the avenue and past the scattered people who have something better to do. He's almost at Marshfield and Sycamore when he spots three women in their twenties crowded around a lamp post with a somewhat disinterested looking man sporting a beanie. One of the women is sitting in a fold-out lawn chair, and the others have placed their tote bags in the other, unoccupied seats. A security guard is patrolling the area, walkie-talkie in hand as he passes by the group standing near what Steve assumes is the location.

"How much longer?" says the one lounging in the chair. Her hair is wound up in a bun, and she's wearing a faded t-shirt from The Avengers' summer 1999 tour. "I am dying and all we have left are Tina's freaking peanut butter crackers. I fuckin' _hate_ peanut butter crackers."

Steve laughs in spite of himself, and heads back toward the main strip in search of provisions.

Thirty minutes later, he returns to the scene. It's almost six-forty, and the deep navy blue of the night sky is slowly fading into the orange and pink of the morning. There are a few new arrivals, mostly girls and women all eagerly chatting with each other and looking at photos on each other's phones. Someone brought a boom box and _No Assembly Required_ is playing. Steve shifts the boxes in his arms as he approaches the guy who'd he'd spotted earlier. "What's going on?"

The guy shrugs and looks sheepish. "My girlfriend dragged me out here for The Avengers star thing. She loved—oh, _shit._ " He actually gasps out the last word. "Shit, it's you. Can I tell—"

Steve nods, and watches as the guy taps his girlfriend on the shoulder. She's petite, with curly hair cascading artfully down her back, and she's talking to the girl who had earlier been griping about not having any food besides peanut butter crackers.

"Tina, _Tina_ , it's Steve," the guy says.

Tina snorts and turns back toward her friend in the lawn chair. "Shut up, Gavin."

"No, seriously, _Steve Rogers_ is standing right next to me with—"

"I got breakfast," Steve shouts. "Who wants some doughnuts?"

A dozen heads turn his way. Tina's friend in the chair is the first to react, and she lets out a short shriek and covers her mouth. A teenage girl standing next to a lamp post jumps up and down, and Tina's eyes go wide and she punches Gavin in the arm. "Oh, oh my God!"

Steve waves sheepishly, and uses his free hand to flip open the box of pastries.

The sun rises, and the crowd is almost unnaturally calm as they come up for doughnuts. Even now, there are times when Steve finds himself wary of crowds lest they swarm him and demand autographs or pictures or worse. Maybe it's the early hour or the fact that there's still not a whole lot of them out and about, but all the fans seem pretty cool. One girl does look as if she might pass out when he hands her a cinnamon roll, but that's the extent of the worrying behavior.

"It's _so_ nice to meet you," gushes the chair girl. She introduced herself as Shelby, and she all but fell over trying to scramble to get up once Steve announced his presence. "Me and Tina drove down all the way from Ojai so that we could be here. We've been here like, almost all night with Gav and I don't know why I'm telling you this, because I was just going to ask if I could get a picture with you?"

"Yeah, no problem." He sets the empty doughnut boxes next to Shelby's chair ("Don't let me forget to throw those out, okay?" he says before she replies, "Are you kidding, I'm taking these home with me!") and wraps an arm around her while Gavin takes a picture of them. After two shots, she lets out a squeal of delight and Steve glances at his watch. It's six minutes 'til eight, and he figures that he has enough time to go back to the hotel and take a nap before ceremony prep starts in earnest at noon.

"See you later!" he calls out to the crowd as he takes his leave. A chorus of _bye, Steve_ s echoes behind him, and he can't help but smile the rest of the way back to the hotel. There's something satisfying about surprising someone who's so interested and invested in you. The least you can do is make them feel good, right?

The good feeling only lasts until eleven thirty, when Phil calls them all down to go over the itinerary for the day. Usually, Phil emailed the details of the day, but this day seemed to warrant a sit-down talking to.

"The word on Tumblr is that you were out on Sycamore giving food to fans," Phil says the moment that Steve comes into the suite. He's got his iPhone with him today, and he turns the screen around so that Steve can see the slightly grainy photo of him with Shelby, the caption below it reading _SO THIS JUST HAPPENED._

"There weren't that many people," Steve says, watching as Clint saunters in holding a huge coffee cup from 7-11. "The situation was totally under control."

Phil looks unconvinced. "Well, you can do whatever you want, but next time, at _least_ take security with you. The last thing any of us needs is you getting jumped."

"It'd take a lot of 'em to take Cap down," Clint says with a grin. He pulls the phone out of Phil's hand and thumbs back to the photo in the app. "Coulson, it _still_ weirds me out that you're on more social media than anyone over the age of thirty should be."

"At least it wasn't like that time in Washington," Steve says.

"Mmm," Clint says as he continues to scroll through Phil's dashboard. "Catholic schoolgirls chasing you for three blocks."

"Can I have my phone back?" Phil asks.

"Yeah, I was just seeing what other weird shit you're looking at under here." Clint tosses the phone back to Phil and looks back at Steve. "One day, you're gonna do something like that and the next thing you know, you're gonna wake up tied to the bed in someone's cabin in the dead of winter," he jokes.

\-----

Choosing Natasha to give their induction speech had been a no-brainer. There had been all sorts of things to negotiate and legalities to worry about, but that one choice had been the easiest part of the whole process.

Despite her somewhat anxious texts to Steve ("you're going to hate this, it's CHEESY x 100"), she gives a great speech. She talks about meeting Steve and Thor at a photo shoot, and later helping Steve to learn a certain choreography break. "He seemed completely hopeless on the dancing front," she says, and everyone laughs, "but he more than made up for it with that voice."

She compliments Bruce and Tony's songwriting, and Thor and Clint's showmanship. She talks about how considerate they'd all been to her, despite the fact that they all were more or less coming in onto the scene at around the same time. "So, gentlemen," she says as she looks askance, "Congratulations. You've definitely earned this."

Applause and cheers almost drown out the traffic around them. Natasha steps away from the podium so that Steve and the others can make their own acceptance speeches.

"Good job," Steve whispers to Natasha when she finally reaches him.

She grins. "The earlier version had more incriminating stories than that one did."

Clint goes first: "Thanks, everyone, for ensuring that something of me will forever be immortalized next to The Osmonds. No, seriously, though, it means a lot. Thank you."

Tony is next. Someone close to the stage shouts, "LOVE YOU!" and in response, he blows them a kiss. "And I love _all_ of _you,_ " he intones. "I could go down the boring, clichéd route, all, 'We would be nothing without you and your support,' but, c'mon, we've done that so many times both in speech form and in song form. I mean, 'Just For You' is a thank you in common time. The most frequently used time signature to express something said so much, something that bears repeating.

"I could go down a list of damn near everyone who got me— _us_ —to this point, but that's more of Steve's thing to do, so I will let _him_ handle that part of the conversation. Instead, I'll thank Phil Coulson, who has put up with _plenty_ of… _shenanigans_ from all of us at varying times, Nick Fury, who ran a tight ship and flung us all together in hopes of creating something great, and finally, Bruce, Thor, Steve, and Clint. It's been real, it's been fun, and as soon as we finish our new stuff, may it—"

He can't even finish the sentence, because everyone within the radius of the scene seems to be dissolving into hysterics. Steve spots Shelby and Tina from earlier near the front of the stage shrieking and jumping up and down. Everyone else in the vicinity that isn't letting out squeals of glee are frantically snapping pictures with their phones or sending out texts or tweets, all while Tony stands at the podium, a sly grin spread across his face.

Steve has never wanted to strangle someone so much in his entire life.

\-----

 

> **YM:** Who has the dirtiest mouth?
> 
> **Clint:** Steve. You'd be surprised. Dude can curse in four different languages.
> 
> **Steve:** That's not true. [pause] Three.
> 
> — _YM Magazine_ , June 1999

One thing that's essential to being in a boy band is knowing your place. Tony was the Bad Boy, for obvious reasons. Bruce was the Quiet One, Thor the Heartthrob, and Clint was the Funny One. This left Steve to be the Good Guy.

Being the Good Guy meant blending in and sticking out at the exact same time. It meant getting the same amount of shrieks that the Heartthrob did, but having to be the one to calm the hysterical fans down during meet and greets. It meant being the one voted Best to Take Home to Your Mother, and (in a slightly mortifying moment) being #5 on _People_ 's Sexiest Men Alive list in 2000.

There were kernels of truth in that public persona, of course, but the most frustrating thing about it was that it hid the fact that no one falls into one specific characterization all the time. And Steve is _not_ one-hundred percent purer than fresh mineral water, so it's only fair that the first thing he can think to say once they've regrouped after the ceremony is "What the _fuck_ , Tony?"

"Yeah, what the fuck!" Clint echoes.

"Are you _serious_ ," Natasha says.

"What new work _exactly_ are you talking about?" Thor asks. "We haven't even begun to discuss that possibility!"

Bruce keeps opening his mouth for a few seconds, only for no words to come out. To Steve, he looks like one of those battery powered singing fish put on mute. When speech finally comes back to him, all he can do is sputter, "I—we—you—"

"You broke Bruce!" Clint says.

Tony raises his hands in surrender, as if that would diffuse the situation. "I can explain!"

"Then by all means, please do," Thor says.

Tony's eyes dart around. "Uh, it seemed like a good idea at the time?"

"That's _all_ you've got?" Natasha asks.

He shrugs.

"Do you intend on actually following through on that?"

Tony clenches his jaw and fidgets with his watch for a moment before looking at the ceiling as if it somehow will provide the answer to Natasha's question. "I mean, it's doable," he says. "Come on, give me and Bruce and Thor a week and we'll have enough material written, and of _course_ we could use my studio and it'd just be a matter of timing, right?" He grins and wraps an arm around Bruce's shoulders. "Right, Brucie?"

Bruce narrows his eyes and snaps his mouth shut. "I need a moment."

Thor nods. "I think we all do."

There is an overly long moment of silence that is punctured once Tony's phone starts playing "Strawberry Fields Forever". The color drains from his face as he picks up. "Pepper!" he says as he adjusts his tie. "How is—"

He has to hold the phone away from his ear for a moment. Steve can't hear anything, but he can imagine that Pepper is possibly reading him the riot act. She hadn't been able to make it out for the ceremony, but had most likely been back at her office catching everything on the live stream. If her reaction to Tony's announcement had been anything like Phil's, she was probably scrambling to figure out how to diffuse the publicity nightmare before her.

Phil crosses his arms and makes a sound that's half sigh, half grunt. "This is a disaster."

\-----

"But seriously, though," Clint says about week later, "I think we could pull it off."

Steve pinches the bridge of his nose. "Really?"

"I've been going over everything, right, and negotiations for the next season of _The X Factor_ are set to start in about two weeks. It's pretty much a sinking ship at this point, and I haven't got anything else lined up in the meantime, so why _not_ do something? Besides, I kind of miss you assholes."

Steve chuckles, and opens the refrigerator to see if any of the previous night's takeout still looks appealing. It's the first time he's been back in his apartment in five months, yet he's still eating like he's on the road. "I don't know. This is the first stretch of free time I've had for about a year, and after this I'm supposed to get back to the studio for the next album."

"But your material's about eighty-five percent cover songs," Clint points out. "You can do that any time. Don't you miss doing the thing with the rest of us?"

He stands with the fridge open, considering both the boxes of Chinese food and Clint's question. Of course he finds his solo work immensely satisfying, but there are moments before he's about to go out in front of an audience in an arena and he misses having four other guys out there with him. It's nice to be Steve Rogers, singer of pop standards and international icon, but amidst the chaos during their heyday, being an Avenger was just as nice at times.

"Kind of," he says finally. "But don't hold me to that."

The next day Tony texts him: _CALL ME ASAP_. The moment that he picks up, Tony exclaims, "Barton says you miss us! Well, do I have news for you!"

"I never agreed to anything," Steve insists. "I…"

Tony ignores him and says, "Bruce is on board. Well, I mean, I'm working on him. Jesus, you produce twelve top ten songs with a guy and all of a sudden he gets cold feet and have to talk him back off the ledge. So Clint's game, and I _think_ I can get Bruce on our side, and now all we need is for you to work on Thor, 'cause he's more or less committing to run for Congress or Parliament or whatever in Norway by now."

"Sweden," Steve corrects.

"Right," Tony says. "Talk to him, will you, Rogers? We need him."

There was another thing about being the Good Guy in a boy band: having to play mediator. "Fine," Steve said through clenched teeth. "I'll let you know."

\-----

"Something True", their first single, came out in June of 1997. Steve remembers hearing it for the first time, if only because he'd gotten ridiculously obsessed with trying to catch it on the radio. They'd just wrapped the album a week earlier and everyone had gone home to wait to see how well the single would do before SHIELD would plan their next move.

That first day also happened to be the day that Bucky finally reached his breaking point and threatened to toss Steve's boom box out the fire escape. After turning the volume down only for Steve to crank it back up again, he'd said, "You have been listening to Z100 for _eight goddamn days_ straight, and I swear to God that if I hear 'Wannabe' _one more time_ , I am going to—"

"Just one more hour, Buck," Steve pleaded. "I'm pretty sure that they're gonna play it any minute now."

"You've been saying that for three days," Bucky raved. "And they still—"

Steve turned the radio back up in enough time to hear "You Were Meant for Me" fade out and a familiar _whoa oh oh oh oh oh oh_ start up. The thrill of hearing the run that he'd recorded months before on a station that had been the background noise to his life for the past few years felt like a surge of electricity shooting through his veins.

"That's it, that's IT!" he laughed. "They're finally fuckin' playing it!"

Bucky's look of sheer malice from a minute before morphed into something like pride. "Language," he said, mimicking Ms. Muhaney, the vice-principal at the middle school that he and Steve went to.

"Fuck off," Steve said. He couldn't stop grinning for what felt like an hour after.

The first three stations in the country to play the song were Z100, KISS FM in Dallas, and Q102 in Philadelphia. Phil would later tell them that the Philly station's lines were busy for thirty minutes straight after the song's first play, and once the lines were finally back up, everyone seemed to be asking about _that song from that Avengers group._

A week later, they were all in southern California, preparing to shoot their first music video. They'd been styled to within an inch of their lives, been hastily taught a dance routine by a choreographer who had once danced backup for Janet Jackson, and signed autographs for curious passersby who knew that they were supposed to be famous, but not that they were still pretty much second stringers. When the shoot was over, Steve went back to Brooklyn with a new haircut, a brand new pair of Nikes that the wardrobe assistant from the shoot had let him keep, and a particularly annoying, dull ache in his bones. "I don't know if it's from the dancing or what," he said when Bucky found him face down on the couch.

"Maybe it's something else." He felt Bucky tugging on the leg of his jeans—the same faded and worn Levis he'd left New York in. "Dude, your jeans are making you look like you're waiting for a flood. Maybe you're finally growing."

"Maybe."

"So, what's gonna happen after this? You guys going on tour or something?"

"Right now, it's looking like a lot of radio promo. Phil's saying that we're going to start going to stations in the Midwest, and then back out to LA to shoot the next video. SHIELD hasn't decided what single it'll be, but who knows after that?"

That phrase would come back to haunt him.

Somewhere at the beginning of it all—in retrospect, Steve can't pinpoint exactly when; maybe it was before their debut album reached the Top Ten on _Billboard_ , or right when he finally finished that insane growth spurt that made him suddenly six feet tall and in need of having to relearn the dance routines that he'd finally gotten down—things started to get crazy.

He'd expected certain things from the newfound fame, like the interviews and photo shoots and early mornings. He hadn't anticipated all the dead time on a video shoot or how disorienting it was to wake up in a hotel bed in a different city every day when before, he'd barely traveled out of the tri-state area. Despite those things, he was slowly becoming accustomed to the change in lifestyle.

He hadn't been prepared to deal with the girls.

They'd been there since that first video shoot, watching him and the others as they did a routine on a boardwalk with lights and cameras pointed at them and harried wardrobe and makeup assistants dashing over when they finished a take. There were more girls weeks later, pressed against the glass wall separating the studio from the street when they did all those radio interviews at seven AM, just in time for all the morning drive listeners to hear. When the album was released in late August, there were swarms of girls to watch their five song set at Virgin Records, and they all lined up after to get autographs on the liner notes from their newly purchased Avengers albums.

Once they started on their first headlining tour, there were suddenly girls _everywhere_ , and everywhere they went, the girls followed, and they were usually screaming.

Steve thought that it would, at the very least, calm down somewhat once the tour was over and he got home. He hadn't expected to get back to his old neighborhood and find Bucky hanging out on the front stoop chatting with three _very_ enthusiastic looking girls dressed in flares and belly-baring baby tees. As soon as Steve was within their line of sight, one of them let out a shriek that left Steve's ears ringing for the rest of the night.

(Years later on his first solo tour, Steve met the shrieking girl at a meet and greet. "I know you don't remember me, but I kind of ended up stalking your best friend for a while, and I was there when you got back in town after your first big tour," she said. She told him that her name was Liza, and that she and her friends ran Always Avengers, one of their biggest fan sites from way back when. "I'm _so_ sorry for being like, the worst person and doing that."

"Hey, you were what, fifteen?" Steve said as he signed her copy of _Rolling Stone_ circa winter 2000. "Everyone does stupid things when they're fifteen.")

There were the girls and a constant stream of wardrobe fittings ("Can someone stop slipping Miracle Grow into Steve's breakfast?" Bruce quipped one night in Barcelona), and more girls and finagling a deal for Bucky to act as their official pre-show DJ and spawning a fan base of his own. Every time one or all of them went to _TRL_ , Times Square became bedlam, and during their _Avengers Live_ appearance the week that _No Assembly Required_ came out in 1999, the NYPD officially prohibited them from even going near the windows in the studio, lest the sight of the biggest pop group in the world caused their adoring public to riot. It was too much and not enough at the same time, the kind of power and glory that swirled in perpetual motion.

As much as Steve sometimes found it to be terrible and dizzying, he found himself growing addicted to it all.

\-----

On July fifth, they all convene at Tony's place in Malibu to begin preliminary work on the album.

Thor wakes them up at five-thirty the next morning, much to Tony's dismay and Clint's straight-up refusal to move unless coffee is offered. To help lessen the sting, Steve makes pancakes and a pithy attempt at an omelet while Thor rounds the others up for an obscenely early morning group meeting. He calls the meeting to order by tapping a wooden spoon on the counter top like a gavel. "Should any of you have ideas, the floor is open."

Clint slowly raises his left hand in the air while firmly grasping his coffee mug with his right. "Remind me of _why_ we agreed to do this again?" he asks. "Also, I need a bigger mug. I _know_ there is a bigger mug in this house."

"We're doing it for money," Bruce mutters.

"For the fans," Steve says, wincing as soon as the words leave his mouth.

"Because Tony can't keep his mouth shut ever," Clint adds as Thor thrusts what appears to be a bowl with a handle attached to the side at him. "Thanks, man, I _knew_ it."

"Because Tony, by merit of _not keeping his mouth shut ever_ , just might have gotten you your biggest pay day in years," Tony snaps.

Steve groans and considers banging his forehead against the table top. "Tony. Can you not be an asshole for more than five minutes, please?"

"What? Don't act as if it's not true."

"Fuck off, Stark," Clint says as he heads to the coffeemaker.

"Gentlemen!" Thor raps the spoon on the counter. "May I remind you that we're supposed to be trying to come up with some idea for this new album that Tony has volunteered us for? Clint, you don't have to keep raising your hand to speak, what is it?"

"How about we do a cover album?

"What, something like Steve does?"

"Well, not _exactly._ " He shuffles slowly back to the table lest the contents of his huge coffee mug spill all over the floor. "I'm thinking that we could all pick like, three songs each and we would have enough stuff to put something kind of acceptable together."

Tony pokes at the last of his food. "And what songs are you going to bring to the table?"

Clint takes a moment to chug approximately half of his coffee before saying, "I think I could do a bitchin' arrangement of 'Piano Man'…"

" _Are you kidding,_ "Tony says.

Clint looks offended. "What's wrong with Billy Joel?"

"Nothing," Steve says, even though Bruce and Tony are exchanging mutual looks of sheer contempt. "Just… do you have any other ideas?"

"How about we rework one hit wonders or something? Or the best worst songs of the Eighties?"

"Make him stop," Bruce stage whispers to Tony. "Go get our stuff."

To no one's surprise, post-Avengers dissolution, Bruce and Tony continued to collaborate and produce music together. Tony tried to launch a solo career, but the synthpop plus electronica sound he was working with didn't catch on. It was only after he remastered and remade some of that material with Bruce and gave it to some up and comers that the critical acclaim and Grammys started to roll in. Around the time that Steve started working on his second album, Bruce called him and asked if he would be up for coming in to work on something. The result was "Long Road Home", the first of Steve's singles to hit the top ten in the iTunes store and the first to get him a Grammy nod of his own.

Bruce returns with his laptop, and he spends about ten minutes searching through folders for a series of titles that Tony starts shooting off: "Something Like That", "Try Again Next Year", "Perfect Lie", "Again and Again", all in rapid succession. Some of the songs are fragmented, dissonant recordings with Bruce strumming an acoustic guitar and Tony doing the vocal work, and others are complete demos, with full production and Bruce's baritone acting as a counterbalance to Tony's tenor.

"These are all quite good," Thor says as the last untitled track finishes.

"Some of them could use a little something extra," Tony admits. "Which is where _you_ come in, Big Guy. I think a few of them need more cowbell."

Thor looks like a kid standing in the middle of FAO Schwartz. "I'm happy to be of service. And it's much better than a cover album. No offense, Steve."

"None taken."

"What about 'No offense, Clint'?"

"None to you, either." Thor raps the spoon on the counter top. "Tony, Bruce, and I will reconvene in the studio at noon; other than that, this meeting is adjourned."

\-----

There is a kind of duality to celebrity that Steve constantly struggles with.

There are moments when he wonders _why_ he's still trying to figure it out for himself. He's been famous for damn near twenty years at this point; he should be able to navigate between his public and private lives with ease. He's talked about this issue with Sam some, about how some mornings he wakes up feeling at ease and ready for press or promotion or performing, and how sometimes he wakes up and feels haunted by his first few years in the spotlight and like he'll never completely get away from being Steve from The Avengers.

"That's simple," Sam says. "You became famous when you were, what, sixteen? And you're the youngest guy in the group, so it's kind of like you were the baby brother and you're still trying to prove that you're not just the kid who picks their nose in the backseat anymore."

"That makes sense, but that last part sounds kind of… personal."

Sam laughs. "Hey, some kids do disgusting things."

"Does _some kids_ include you?"

"I can neither confirm nor deny that. How's it going over in the studio?"

"Good. I guess." It's been about a week since they started recording, and things are… well, they aren't quite going smoothly, but at least Tony and Thor aren't sniping at each other over leads, and Bruce hasn't become so thoroughly disgusted with them all that he's stormed out. Of course it won't feel the same as it did when they did the first two records, but maybe something good (something new) will come out of this. "I mean, all of us in the same house kind of feels like a bad season of _The Real World_ , but besides that, it's good. The session guys are excellent, but I miss seeing you and Sharon in there playing."

"And you really just mean Sharon, but okay, I'll take it."

"No, seriously." For the past six years, Sharon and Sam had not only accompanied Steve on tour, at least one of them had been in the studio to record with him. Right now, though, they're with Natasha working on _her_ new record. "Maybe if we take this show on the road, you and the rest of the band could back us."

"Who'd back us?"

"Is that Bruce?" Sam asks. "Tell him I said hi, and that Nat's wondering if anyone's died yet."

"It's Sam," Steve says as he sinks into one of the chairs at the control console. Bruce is going over the day's work, playing and replaying audio and trying to get a mix that sounds remotely satisfying. "And Natasha wants to know if we've killed anyone yet."

"No," Bruce says, raising his voice so that Sam could possibly hear him on the other end. "Well, Clint _did_ knock out one of the multidirectional mics, and I lost two-fifths of the audio for the day—"

"So some blood was drawn," Sam says, "But you've all gone on to live for another day."

"Thor almost lost it when the pizza guy got our order wrong," Steve says. "Besides that, we've been good."

In the background, Natasha shouts, "Told you! Pay up, Wilson."

"Has she been listening the whole time?" Steve asks.

"Speakerphone. What a great invention." There's a faint shuffling, and then the sound of Natasha's laughter in stereo. "Send me some of your stuff when it's mixed down so I can hear it, Steve."

"Is that an order or a request?"

"If I say _please_ , that makes it a polite request, right? So, that."

"Get back to work!" Sam yells before adding, "'Bye!"

\-----

Steve and Thor ended up being selected for _Teen People_ 's 21 Under 21 feature, and on the day of the cover photo shoot, they met Natasha for the first time.

Before that, Steve knew a grand total of about four things about Natasha Romanov. The first was that while she'd been signed to a development deal around the same time that The Avengers started recording their first album, the material that she recorded for her own debut had been destroyed six months before the planned release date. It was supposed to have been kept under wraps, but Steve had overheard Phil talking about how it was a shame that "the Romanov girl's demos are gone" to Maria Hill. "She had some good work."

The second thing that he knew about her was that after her original debut was destroyed, it was rumored that she took a month off and came back with twelve completed tracks that were so amazing that they made Nick Fury weep from both eyes. When Tony heard that statement, he'd said, "Wait, he has _another_ eye under that patch?" and Phil gave him a look that not only shut him up, but could have possibly turned the surface of the sun into ice.

The third thing that he knew was that she was gorgeous, but that was less knowledge and more of an observation gleaned from seeing her face on CD covers in every music store he went to.

The fourth was that previews of three of the songs from _Some Assembly Required_ were hidden tracks at the end of her album, which was speeding its way up the charts. "So be friendly when you meet her," Phil advised. "She could be a good ally."

"You make this shoot sound like war, talking like that," Thor said.

"Not war, just strategy. Don't be _too_ friendly, though."

"Why?" Steve asked. "You don't want anyone to think that we might be, I don't know… that one of us would…"

He looked away once Phil started glaring at him. Steve was certain that he wasn't _totally_ doing it to be authoritative and intimidating, but damn if it wasn't coming off that way.

"No inter-label fraternization," Phil said in a stern voice. He uncrossed his arms and seemed to force himself to smile. "Have a great shoot!"

Steve and Thor finished their pre-shoot routine before Natasha, so they were sent to wait for her in the studio with the photographer. They'd been engrossed in a conversation about _The X Files_ , backs to the door when one of the lighting assistants cleared his throat and said, "Um, Miss Romanov's here."

Natasha was barefoot and wearing a shimmery black tank top that seemed to catch all the available light in the room. She crossed her arms and looked Steve over before focusing on Thor.

"God," she said, "I'm going to have to stand on a milk crate for this whole thing."

While the cameras were on them, she posed with ease, and she even laughed at one of the dumb puns that Louisa from wardrobe said in between shots. Once they were done taking pictures, she sauntered toward the door before calling out, "Goodbye," like an afterthought.

"What was that all about?" Thor asked as he and Steve changed back into their street clothes. "We didn't even do anything to her."

"Hell if I know," Steve said. "I'm bad at girls." That had to be the reason why _he_ wasn't the Heartthrob. Thor basked in the female attention like it was nothing, while Steve still felt like a fraud when girls ran up to him with stars in their eyes. He half expected at least one of them to see through the professional styling and his new physique and see the scrawny, asthmatic kid that he still felt like when the spotlights weren't on.

In May, two months after the _Teen People_ shoot, The Avengers were housed in a New York studio to work on their routines for their first world tour. Their new choreographer was deeply invested in completely reworking a few of their classic routines, and Steve kept fumbling his way through them all.

His missteps only got worse when he looked up halfway through "Break Out" and realized that Natasha was standing in a corner, watching him struggle through the routine.

After another weak attempt, the choreographer called for a break. Clint, Bruce, and Thor went off in search of water and Gatorade, and Tony went out to use his cell phone to call and antagonize Pepper Potts, their new publicist. Steve crept into one of the smaller studios with a stereo in hand, hoping to get in a few minutes of solo practice.

"Hey, Rogers!"

He forced himself to hide his contempt as Natasha ran toward him.

"What're you up to?" she asked as she thrust her hands into the pockets of her gray hoodie.

"Nothing," he said as he stepped into the empty studio and flicked on the lights. "Don't you have somewhere else to be?"

"I'm done for the day," she replied. "You're not, though. Want me to help?"

"Help?" Steve plugged the stereo in and pressed play, trying to get to the track he needed. "Do you even know the routine?"

"Well," she said, "I saw enough of it. Want to see?"

Steve only bothered to look up when he pressed play. Natasha was standing in the center of the room, hands on her hips until the bass line kicked in. As soon as Tony's vocals started, she began to move. And _move_ , like she'd practiced the steps alongside Steve and she'd mastered them.

"Okay," she said when the song was over. "Now it's your turn."

Natasha proved to be an excellent teacher. She was patient, but made Steve repeat a movement until he was able to match her step to step. "You're doing great," she said after three tries. "You just need a little more work, and I think you'll have it all down."

"Huh," Steve said. "Um, well, I think I've gotta get back to the others about now. You—thanks for helping me with that. You didn't have to…"

"It's nothing," she said lightly. "I'm sorry about the shoot. I—it was a rough day for me, and here I was being thrown in with the two of you when I thought I'd be doing the shoot solo threw me off. Anyway. Let's get you back to your friends."

When they arrived back in the main studio, only Clint and Tony were skulking about. Natasha cupped her hands around her mouth and shouted, "Hey, Barton! I brought back a stray for you."

Clint's face brightened. "Steve! You didn't tell me that you were chummy with Nat now."

"I'm not?" Steve said before whispering to Natasha, "How do you know each other?"

"I was auditioning for SHIELD around the time Clint got signed on for development," she said. "He used to look out for me before he got in with your group."

Natasha was content to sit and watch their practices for the final days that they were in studio, and in the off hours, she was eager to practice with Steve. The private jaunts seemed to send Clint into protective older brother mode, making Steve worry that his band mate might try to give him a shovel talk. "Ignore him," Natasha said on the last night in the studio. They'd long since tired of the tour routines, and she was attempting to teach Steve a waltz. "It's coming from a good place, but I can handle myself."

As the months went by and her star rose, she more than proved it. Rumors began to rise that she'd slept her way into a record deal, that she'd had plastic surgery, that she was a sleeper agent for Boris Yeltsin, or that she was a Mafia princess who'd had an ex-boyfriend murdered because he cheated on her.

(Less than a year later, the single "Black Widow" dropped, and it booted The Avengers' "Save the Day" out of the top spot on the Hot 100. It stayed there for six weeks, and the video—featuring Natasha clad in a black cat suit seducing and destroying a string of cheating lovers—boosted her profile just as much as her hanging out with The Avengers did. This, of course, started up another round of rumors about her dating all of them.

Which was laughable, because if anyone besides the fan sites paid attention, they knew that Natasha only had eyes for one James Barnes, the DJ who was now calling himself The Winter Soldier.)

\-----

 **Sharon:** well, shit, color me impressed.

 **Steve:** ???

 **Sharon:** nat sent me 2 of your completed songs. you sound pretty good considering.

 **Steve:** Considering what?

 **Sharon:** that u all haven't sung together in years. ;)

 **Sharon:** seriously, though, it's really good.

 **Sharon:** like, it reminds me a little of your old stuff

 **Sharon:** it has that avengers sound to it

 **Sharon:** but it doesn't reek of 90s jock jams

 **Steve:** We left that sound back in 97 with JNCOs.

 **Sharon:** oh god don't remind me of those.

 **Sharon:** what about all those huge jerseys you guys wore?

 **Steve:** God, I forgot about those.

 **Sharon:** just started pulling up pics of yr old shoots

 **Sharon:** you all look tragic.

 **Steve:** Not *all.*

 **Sharon:** rogers, you had a caesar hair cut in your first video!

 **Steve:** I thought we would never talk about that again.

 **Sharon:** someone has to remind you of your tragic sartorial history.

 **Sharon:** if you + the rest were female, glamour would have done and then and now spread on you.

\-----

This was how the biggest boy band in the world fell apart: not with a whimper, but with a massive bang.

That bang was entirely self-inflicted and started with Bruce and Tony's songwriting contributions getting more passes from the label than the pieces that Thor worked on solo. That, along with Thor feeling slighted in the vocal lead department, began to come up more and more as they worked on _The New Age._

"It didn't bother you before," Tony said during one recording session. "Why are you bringing it up now?"

"It's the principle of the thing!" Thor snapped. "You and Steve share most of the main vocals, and I have been regulated to the background! Why aren't we switching more?"

This was the new routine: go into the studio, watch Tony and Thor throw down over who got more leads or lyrics that one or the other deemed asinine, and hope that it wouldn't end with anyone storming out. After a while, Steve started keeping a tally, and by the time they wrapped, Thor had left the studio a total of nine different times, with Tony and Bruce both leaving seven, and Clint walking out one night when a particularly nasty fight had stretched past their allotted break time. When asked why he was leaving, he shouted, "'Cause I'm fuckin' hungry!"

 _The New Age_ was released in November of 2000, and while it debuted at #1 on Billboard and sold well overall, its numbers were nowhere near the insane ones that _The Avengers_ and _Some Assembly Required_ boasted. A tour was scheduled for the spring and summer, which relieved Steve. Going on the road was like a baptism: any of the bad feelings from recording and promotion would be washed away, and they would be born again.

Onstage, they were great. Reviewers seemed particularly fond of the tour, going as far as to say it was a must-see and "the arena show of the year".

Off-stage, they were a mess. It got so bad near the end that Tony and Thor began to refuse to speak to each other unless a third party was present, and that third party usually was Steve. Clint started hanging out with the road crew when they weren't rehearsing or doing press, preferring to be up on the rigging while everyone fell apart below. Bruce grew more and more withdrawn, opting to hang out in his dressing room until being on stage became absolutely necessary. "I don't know how much longer this is gonna last," he told Steve the day before their last VMA performance. "It's like we're a time bomb."

That bomb went off as they were heading back to the hotel after the after party. Tony had gotten three too many drinks in him and Thor was feeling testy after they'd lost Best Group Video for the first time in three years, and they began sniping at each other as they went through the lobby.

"Shut up," Steve hissed as they headed toward the elevators. "It's one in the morning."

"Doesn't matter!" Tony shouted. "We're not on a residential floor!"

"Do you even know what you're fighting about any more?" Bruce asked. He hadn't partied as much as Tony had, but he looked almost as worn down. "This is ridiculous."

"You want ridiculous?" Thor boomed. "I quit."

Clint was walking next to Steve, and he came to a complete and sudden stop. "Hold the phone, _what._ "

"YOU?" Tony's voice echoed through the (mostly) empty room. "YOU QUIT?"

"Tony," Steve said in as gentle of a voice as he could muster. "Thor, can you—"

"You can't fucking _quit._ " Tony shrugged out of the glitter spackled leather coat he had sported for most of the evening and flung it on the floor. "I'm the one who's quitting, and I'm taking Bruce with me."

Clint scratched the top of his head. "What the fuck is happening?"

Thor shuffled close to Tony, leaned down, and grabbed the front of his shirt before Steve could protest. "You _cannot_ take Bruce."

"Ooh, what're you gonna do, hit me?" Tony slurred. "C'mon, Bruce, let's blow this—"

"Do you _mind_ not talking about me like I'm not here?" Bruce asked. "For _once_ in your lives, do you think you could _actually_ consider not dragging me, or anyone else into this fucked up pissing contest that you two've got going on?"

"He has a point," Steve said.

"And _you_ ," Bruce said, pointing at Steve, "You don't do anything except pretend that nothing's wrong, and you keep going in between them like it's going to make any kind of difference, and Clint climbs up in the rafters like a goddamn pigeon, and you know what, fuck all of this, _I_ quit."

They were lucky, in that none of it went down a few years later, because someone with a camera phone surely would have gotten the entire thing on video and uploaded it to YouTube. As it was, the next morning they all scattered to possibly find themselves, only for the world to fall apart around them.

There was only one good thing about those first two months, and that was that the Diamondbacks beat the Yankees in the World Series. Steve should have realized that something was wrong when he couldn't even be properly happy that the Yankees had been defeated, but instead, he ignored the signs and holed up in his house, only venturing out to go grocery shopping.

October melted into November, and after three weeks of his calls going to voice mail, Bucky showed up the weekend before Thanksgiving. He took one look around at the mess in front of him with disgust.

"Get your ass off the couch," he said, snapping his fingers. "We're going out. Go take a shower, and for God's sake, pick your socks off the floor."

It's the first of many attempts to bring Steve back to the land of the normal. Bucky made a mission to lure him out of the house and to stop living strictly on pizza and breadsticks. By the time the new year rolled around, Natasha got involved, showing up one night with homemade lasagna and the number for a therapist in the area.

Steve turned the business card over and over in his hand for a moment. "You really think that I need to see a shrink?"

"Considering that you might be having an existential crisis paired with depression, _yeah,_ I think it might help," Natasha said.

It was strange, going from sixty to zero in a matter of months, and Steve found it even stranger to recalibrate. His new routine consisted of seeing the shrink, running, and trying to figure out what he could do with his like now that he was a has-been at twenty-two. On occasion, Phil would call him just to say hi, to see how he was progressing, and to extend an olive branch "just in case you ever want to get out there again."

It took about two years for that desire to come back to Steve, so he left Phil a voice mail. "Hey, it's me. Steve. Listen, I've been thinking about maybe getting back in the studio for something. I don't know what, exactly—not anything like what I was doing in The Avengers, maybe something like Sinatra only modern. Does that make sense? Let me know."

A missed call later, and he had a voice mail in response:

"It's me. We can renegotiate your contract and work it into a solo deal, if you feel ready for that. If so…" A soft, wry laugh. "Well, welcome back to SHIELD Records."

 

\-----

[screenshot of tweeted picture with caption below]

 **@SteveROfficial:** Studio downtime = nap time. pic.twitter.com/Y034cn1m55

 

**jezzibelled**

          **myfeelsaresoattacked**

                   **doctorwhosthatgirl**

                            **cryingovercap**

                           dear lord let the new avengers record drop soon

                  ikr?! never got to see them live back in the day. had to settle for that burger king concert video.

         Oh God, that video ushered my sexual awakening. Remember Tony during that pole dance ( _Y'ALL NEED TO STOP LYING THAT WAS DEFINITELY A POLE DANCE_ )?

Sweet baby Jesus, yes. I did not know that I liked men with chest hair until Bruce Banner entered my life.

\-----

There are two weeks left until Natasha's new album is released, and four 'til the first new Avengers record in twelve years is set to drop. There's a three day lull in the middle of the pre-release storm when Steve's not doing anything, so he decides to have an unofficial release party at his place. It's nothing major—just him and Bucky, Natasha, Clint, and Sam and some food and drinks, and sharing horror stories of bad fan behavior.

"Remember that girl who gave Tony her parents' wedding bands?" Steve asks. "Or that time Thor found a naked girl hiding in his hotel closet?"

Clint laughs. "Remember when I got a cold during the Assembly tour, and we saw those girls at the meet and greet grabbing my Kleenex from the trash cans?"

The others groan in disgust.

"Hey, question," Bucky says. "Not that hearing about fans gone wild isn't _riveting_ …"

"Mmm?" Natasha drapes her legs over the couch's arm rest, making her back press somewhat uncomfortably against Steve's left arm. He nudges her shoulder with his bicep, and she frowns at him and picks his arm up so that she can drape it over her shoulders.

"How come you guys never toured together?"

"What, me and her?" Steve asks.

"I guess. I mean, you've got that…" Bucky snaps his fingers like the sound will somehow implant the right word in his mind. "You work well together. Probably would've been cool."

"What _I_ wanna know is why you all and Natasha never toured together," Sam says from his perch across the room.

"Good question," Clint says. "Hey, Tash, why didn't we ever do that?"

"Hell if I know." Natasha idly kicks her legs in the air. "Or, I don't know, it could have been that half of your fan base hated me and would have probably preferred to see me fall into a pit of fire than be within fifty feet of any of you."

"That's not true," Steve says.

"Steve, you never read the comments to anything online. You're blissfully unaware of the darkness that lurks in the hearts of young women who adore you."

"Well, they don't hate you _now._ "

"Not as much, at least." Natasha sighs. "But I have to admit, the idea sounds fun."

They're all quiet for a moment as they consider the possibility.

"Why not do it now?" Steve asks.

Natasha taps her fingers on his forearm. "I'll see if Maria might be able to pull some strings."

\-----

j'accuse! (wonderb00b) wrote in ohnotheydidnt,

**AVENGERS + BLACK WIDOW TOUR THIS IS NOT A DRILL**

Yes, you heard right. A week after her appearance on _Good Morning America_ 's Concert Series, Natasha Romanov announced on her website that she would be hitting the road this summer with the recently reformed Avengers!

"Why do it now? Why not?" the Black Widow said. "We've been close for years, and a good amount of my fans are also fans of theirs, so it'll be fun for everyone involved.

"Besides," she added, "They'll be a great opening act!"

 

**DATES**

June 19 – Chicago, IL

June 20 – St. Louis, MO

June 21 – Toledo, OH

June 24 – Montreal, Quebec

June 25 – Toronto, Ontario

June 26 – Detroit, MI

June 29 – Cincinnati, OH

June 30 – Cleveland, OH

July 5 – Boston, MA

July 6 – Holmdel, NJ

July 7 – Camden, NJ

July 9 – New York, NY

July 10 – Virginia Beach, VA

July 11 – Raleigh, NC

July 12 – Charlotte, NC

July 13 – Atlanta, GA

July 14 – Louisville, KY

July 15 – Memphis, TN

July 18 – Tampa, FL

July 19 – Dallas, TX

July 20 – Houston, TX

July 21 – Phoenix, AZ

July 22 – Las Vegas, NV

July 23 – Los Angeles, CA

July 24 – San Francisco, CA

_[source 1] [source 2]_

_how do we feel about this, ontd? i feel like this should've happened in 2000, it would have been much better then._

775 comments | POST A NEW COMMENT

 

**nvmndokbye**

MY QUEEN AND HER SERVANTS

 

            **iknoiwaswatchin**

            RIGHT?!

 

**assemblyreq**

I have never been so proud of my un as I am right now.

MY BABIES ARE BACK IM CRYING

 

            **rogersbooty**

            jelly of your un

 

                        **assemblyreq**

                        I was surprised no one else had taken it, tbh.

 

            **stupidsnhere**

            i wore my cassette copy of that album OUT. i had the tape bc we were poor lol

 

            **starkfangirl**

            As soon as I found out about it, I screamed in the break room. My coworkers thought I was crazy but as soon as I let them know what was up this one girl was all FUCK YEAH

 

**whatevbasic**

Only here for TA. Natasha's a basic ass bitch.

 

          **heynonninon**

 

 

> annd our first sexist comment is early. Stay pressed that you never hit it with any of them.

 

 

 

>           **starkfangirl**
> 
>          That gif usage!

 

 

 

>                    **heynonninon**
> 
>                   girl i keep my folder at the ready

 

 

 

>           **fujhammer**
> 
>          do you really think she got with any of them? my money would be on clint, she always seemed up on him.

 

 

 

>                    **iwatchtvd**
> 
>                   I shipped her and Steve SO HARD and it hasn't gotten better since he would show up at her shows sometimes.

 

 

 

>                             **sashafiercer**
> 
>                            They would make cute babies, no lie.
> 
>  
> 
>                                      **c00k1emonstr**
> 
>                                     yea if she didnt eat him 1st, ohoho

 

\-----

 **Natasha:** GET READY

 **Steve:** ???

 **Natasha:** PRACTICES START IN T-MINUS TWO DAYS

 **Steve:** Oh, that.

 **Natasha:** Maria says that this is either going to be the tour of the year or it's going to be a disaster, jsyk.

\-----

Tony insists on personally meeting every member of the tech crew. Or, at least, as many as he can.

"Just as a precaution!" he insists as he, Steve, and Rhodey walk around the warehouse where techies are assembling rigs and platforms that will later find their way into arenas all over the country. "If one of us gets decapitated…"

"Decapitated, really?" Steve says.

"No one's going to get decapitated, Tony," Rhodey says in a weary voice. He's been working out the last of the details for the tour with Phil and Maria, confirming Sam and Sharon's contracts, and talking to more than one venue about the amount of pyrotechnics that can safely and legally be used at a single event.

"It's Murphy's law," Tony says. "If it can happen, there's the possibility that it will. Hey!" he shouts at one of the sound techs working on a series of wires leading to a speaker. "Parker, right?"

Parker turns around, and Steve guesses that the kid's probably in his early twenties at the absolute latest. He's got floppy hair and is sporting black framed glasses and a grin that could illuminate the top of the Rockefeller Center tree for a decade. "Holy—oh man, it's so great to meet you guys," he says as he approaches. "Whoa, you're bigger than I thought that you'd be." In a stage whisper, he adds, "Not like him," and points at Tony, making Rhodey snicker for the first time in about a fortnight.

"I heard that," Tony says. "I can fire you, you know!"

"And what, run the risk of making sure that you won't get decapitated?" Steve asks.

"He thinks he's gonna get his head chopped off?" Parker cocks an eyebrow. He pulls his glasses off, and swipes his hair off his forehead. "Tony—I mean, Mr. Stark—I think we've got a pretty solid crew, and even though I mostly do sound, I've _kind_ of had some experience with rigs and other stuff—"

Tony all but grabs Parker and shuffles off to the side. "Show me your work, kid, and I'll reconsider firing you."

Steve crosses his arms and glances at Rhodey as they walk away, Parker rambling about something to do with inertia and bungee cords and Tony nodding vigorously along.

"I think that went well," he says.

Rhodey's brow furrows, and he's about to respond when he lets out an exasperated sigh. "Tony! Get off of that!"

\-----

 **Natasha:** T-minus 5 days 'til opening night.

 **Natasha:** are you ready?

 **Steve:** I can't feel my legs, of course I'm not ready.

 **Natasha:** Have you been forgetting leg day?

 **Steve:** Cute.

 **Steve:** You ready?

 **Natasha:** Of course I am.

 **Natasha:** Just hoping that you won't make me look bad during that final number.

 **Steve:** Why, I would never.

\-----

There are certain pre-show rituals that Steve does, and one of them is to go to seats furthest away from the stage and take a picture from the top. In his apartment, there are albums with a variety of four by six prints and Polaroids inside, all of them from the highest or farthest vantage points at various theaters, arenas, and stadiums all around the world.

"You still do that?" Clint asks as Steve starts toward the stairs leading to the concourse.

"Yeah," he says. "Plus, it's a break from all of… this." He waves a hand at the scene ahead of them: Bruce yelling at Tony for getting in the way of the tech crew ("It's like you really WANT to get your head chopped off!" "Chill, Banner, Parker's going to get me a hard hat!"), and Natasha and Thor brandishing Nerf swords and chasing each other around the pit area.

"Let me go with you," Clint says.

In the four hundred section, the scene below them looks like a flea circus. Clint jogs up and down the steps while Steve moves around, trying to find the best vantage point to snap the photo from. He decides to stand facing the end of the stage, holding his phone out and steadying his arms while the image gets into focus. He holds his breath and presses the shutter once, then twice. "Ready, Clint?"

On the other side of the arena, Clint shouts, "Sure, man!"

When they get back down to the arena floor, Steve goes to the smaller stage and takes a look out at the scene before him. He closes his eyes and tries to picture the crowd the next night. He can almost hear the low roar of conversation that becomes a roar once the lights go down; can almost feel the anticipation building in his stomach as everyone hits their marks. The same feeling he had the first day he heard his own voice on the radio washes over him. It happened so long ago, but Steve hopes that he never loses that feeling. He's going to chase it for as long as he's able.

"Picture time!" Tony bellows.

Steve's jolted out of his reverie as soon as his bandmate reaches the end of the stage. "All of you, get up here. You too, Parker."

"Is this going on Twitter?" Clint asks.

"Probably," Steve says.

Clint leans his head back and groans loudly. "Damn you people and your tweets!"

This time, the scene is more crowded. Peter yanks out his phone as well, and they end up having Thor squat down in front since his arms are the longest and they need a good angle.

"On three, say _cheese,_ " Steve says. "Ready, Thor?"

"Yes!"

"Okay. One, two—"

\-----

 **@SteveROfficial:** See you tomorrow night, Chicago! pic.twitter.com/x7115c2m1q

**Author's Note:**

> IT'S DONE. Oh man, I cannot believe I finally finished this story.
> 
> I have been working on the idea of The Avengers as a boy band in some iteration since I saw a prompt on capkink during the summer of 2011. I started with it in one place and then ended up letting the story die, because I couldn't figure out how to keep it going and because I get crazy stage fright sometimes when it comes to characterization in fic. The second and third tries came after The Avengers came out, but I still couldn't quite make it work for me. But after much wailing and gnashing of teeth, here we are.
> 
> Having come of age during the late 90s/early 2000s era of boy bandom, one of the things I've enjoyed most about writing this story was including nods to the groups of that time and a few slightly before. For example:
> 
> \- The location of The Avengers' Walk of Fame Star is approximately where the Backstreet Boys, New Kids on the Block, and Boyz II Men's Stars are.  
> \- The Twitter handle @AvengersTourPetition was inspired by @NSYNCTourPetition, which I found late one night after watching too many live videos.  
> \- The fan encounters the guys talk about are more or less based on incidents with real pop stars (the girl who gives Tony the wedding rings was inspired by something that happened to AJ McLean from BSB; the tissue story was cribbed from Duran Duran member John Taylor's memoir _In the Pleasure Groove_ ; and the naked girl in the hotel room was something that happened to Joey McIntyre from New Kids on the Block back in the day).  
> \- The mention of pole dancing in the Tumblr post is a reference to a dance that the Backstreet Boys did during their Into the Millennium tour (I think the song was "Don't Want You Back", and there was some grinding on ladders or something? That was one of the defining pop cultural moments of my adolescence, let me tell you).  
> \- The title comes from a line in Duran Duran's "Rio", which is not entirely about a girl as I assumed the first time that I heard it when I was about ten, but is also kind of about taking over a continent with the power of music.
> 
> In closing, I'd like to thank [truthismusic](http://truthismusic.livejournal.com/22414.html) on LJ for the great art, faceupmakeyourstand on Tumblr for beta-ing and giving feedback, thedustatdawn for giving me suggestions and going over my outline and assuring me that I'm not crazy, and dixie-chicken for cheerleading. This story bridges my first online fandom with my most recent, and sharing both with you all is amazing.


End file.
